If you get headaches often, you’ve probably tried the usual fixes, painkillers, more water, more sleep, and found the relief never really lasts. Here’s something that surprises a lot of people: a good chunk of chronic headaches, especially tension and cervicogenic types, don’t actually start in the head. They start in the neck, upper back and shoulders.
Headaches are one of the most common reasons people book in with us, and they’re also one of the conditions that tends to respond really well to hands-on treatment. According to the World Health Organization, headache disorders are among the most common nervous system disorders worldwide, yet remain widely undertreated.
The headaches we can usually help with
Tension headaches
The classic one. It feels like a tight band squeezing the head, and it’s almost always down to muscle tension in the neck, shoulders and upper back. Long hours at a desk, slouchy posture and stress are the main culprits.
Cervicogenic headaches
These come straight from the neck. When the joints in the upper neck stiffen up, they refer pain into the head, often behind one eye, at the base of the skull, or across the forehead. They get misread as migraines more often than you’d think.
Migraines
Migraines have a neurological side to them, no question. But the muscles at the base of the skull, the suboccipitals, are a well-recognised trigger. By easing off those physical contributors, osteopathic treatment can help bring down how often migraines hit and how hard. HealthLink BC notes that 29% of British Columbians report chronic headaches — making this one of the most common conditions in our province.
How we treat them
We look at the whole picture rather than just the part that hurts. That means your posture, how well your neck and upper back move, the tension in the surrounding muscles, and your jaw, since TMJ trouble is tied up with headache patterns in a lot of people.
Depending on what we find, treatment might involve:
- Soft tissue release through the muscles at the base of the skull, the upper traps and levator scapulae
- Mobilising the joints of the upper neck to get them moving freely again
- Craniosacral therapy to settle tension across the whole system
- Work on the mid-back, since posture there feeds neck tension
- Assessing and treating the jaw where it’s part of the problem
Screens, posture and the headache cycle
With so many people now on hybrid and work-from-home schedules, screen time has gone through the roof. The issue is forward head posture, where your head ends up sitting ahead of your shoulders instead of balanced over them. It loads the neck heavily, and as a rough rule, every inch forward adds around ten pounds of strain on the cervical spine. Keep that up day after day and you’ve built the exact tension pattern that keeps headaches coming.
Your first visit
We’ll start by going through your headache history properly, how often, where it hits, what sets it off and what eases it. Then we’ll check your neck, upper back, shoulders and jaw, and build a plan around what we find. Our practitioners are registered members of the College of Registered Manual Osteopaths (CRMO), ensuring qualified and ethical care.
Plenty of people feel a shift after a session or two. Longer-standing cases usually do best with a short run of treatment plus some posture and self-care work to keep it from creeping back.
Book at the clinic nearest to you
No referral needed — book online anytime.
